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SELECT   COMMITTEE 


APPOINTED    BY    THE 


PLANTERS'     CONYENTTON. 


Resolved,  That  a  select  committee  of  one  from  each  State  repre- 
sented in  the  Planters'  Convention,  assembled  at  Memphis,  Tennessee, 
February,  1862,  be  appointed  to  take  into  consideration  the  nature  oi" 
the  war  in  which  the  people  of  the  Confederate  States  are  involved, 
and  what  general  policy  should  be  pursued  to  the  end  that  the  great 
struggle  for  the  constitutional  liberty  and  the  independence  of  the 
Confederate  States  may  be  pre-eminently  successful  without  impairing 
the  power  of  the  American  people  and  their  future  influence  on  the 
destinies  of  nations. 

The  committee  to  whom  the  foregoing  resolution  was  referred  has 
given  the  subjects  therein  embraced  that  careful  consideration  which 
their  importance  at  this  time  demands,  and  respectfully  submit  for 
the  adoption  of  this  Convention  the  following  report : 

This  Avorld  is  prone  to  extremes.  The  greatly  overheated  air  of  the 
perfect  calm,  which  is  calculated  to  produce  pestilence  and  death, 
brings  the  cooling  storm  which  in  its  fury  frequently  uproots  the 
sturdy  oak  or  strips  it  of  its  rich  foliage. 

Men  and  nations  are  not  less  liable  to  extremes  than  the  elements. 
Being  created  strictly  under  the  law  of  mental  and  physical  labor, 
the  calm  of  mental  and  physical  indolence  brings  the  labor  of  strife 
and  war. 

War  has  its  great  evils,  but  that  calm  of  peace,  which  produces 
mental  and  physical  indolence,  is  far  more  blasting  to  the  human 
family  than  the  bloodiest  and  longest  wars.  The  calm  of  peace  had, 
to  some  extent,  produced  idleness,  extravagance  and  vice  among  our 
people.  If  they  now,  promptly,  do  their  duty  to  their  country,  and 
the  true  and  living  God,  the  present  storm  of  war  will  purify  their 
political  atmosphere  and  prepare  them  for  a  future  career  of  pros- 
perity and  greatness  never  equalled  by  any  other  people. 

The  wars  of  the  Carthagenians  against  the  Romans  stirred  up  the 
Roman  people  to  the  utmost  limit  of  human  valor  and  patriotism,  and 
thereby  laid  the  foundation  for  the  greatest  empire  of  ancient  times. 


Too  great  a  centralizatio'h  of  the  power  of  the  Roman  Empire  brought 
about  the  corruptions,  vices  and  indolence  which  burst  the  Great  Em- 
pire into  many  fragments.  From  one,  grand  consolidated  Empire 
sprang  many  petty  kingdoms  and  principalities.  The  practices  of  the 
Christian  Church  in  the  Dark  Ages  became  as  corrupt  as  the  policy 
of  the  Government  of  Rome.  The  vices  of  the  church  brought  forth  the 
Reformation,  which  divided  it  into  many  sectarian  fragments. 
After  the  breaking  up  of  the  Roman  Empire,  and  the  divisions 
of  the  Catholic  Church,  in  the  midst  of  religious  and  political 
quarrels,  and  the  many  petty  dissensions  which  agitated  the  old 
world,  the  Continent  of  America  was  discovered.  A  people  who 
had  wallowed  for  centuries  in  the  mire  of  mental  and  physical 
idleness  were  to  give  way  to  those  who  fled  from  the  old  world  on  ac- 
count of  religious  and  political  persecutions,  or  to  better  their  condi- 
tion on  a  virgin  soil.  While  the  Catholic,  the  Cavalier,  the  Hugenot, 
the  Scotch  and  Irish  spread  over  the  land  from  the  Chesapeake  Bay  to 
the  Mississippi  River,  the  Puritans,  the  Dutch  and  Quakers  rooted 
out  the  Indians  from  Plymouth  Rock  to  the  Ohio.  The  Puritans, 
who  had  fled  from  religious  and  political  persecutions,  had  no  sooner 
obtained  a  little  brief  authority  i\i  the  New  World  than  they  became 
cruel  and  relentless  persecutors  themselves ;  Methodist,  Baptist  and 
Catholic  had  to  seek  homes  under  a  more  Southern  sun  in  order  to 
avoid  the  lash  of  their  bigotry  and  intolerance.  From  the  most  sanc- 
timonious Pharisees  of  the  world  the  descendants  of  these  people  have 
become  regardless  of  the  binding  obligations  of  the  most  solemn  oaths. 
Their  bigotry  and  intolerance  in  religious  matters  were,  by  the  adop- 
tion of  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States,  and  the  establishment 
of  its  authority,  smothered  up  and  suppressed.  But  as  their  religion 
gave  way,  and  their  love  of  money  increased,  political  intolerance 
took  the  place  of  religious  intolerance.  Through  a  dollar  and  cent 
calculation  of  interest,  they  abolished,  within  their  limits,  African 
slavery,  in  such  a  manner  as  resulted  in  transferring  the  greater 
number  of  their  slaves  to  Southern  masters.  No  sooner  had  they 
pocketed  the  profits  of  the  Slave  Trade,  and  rid  themselves  of  the  in- 
stitution of  African  slavery  from  motives  of  interest,  than  they  com- 
menced a  political  persecution  against  their  Southern  brethren  for  re- 
maining slaveholders.  Their  extreme  Phariseeism  and  their  inordi- 
nate love  of  wealth  and  power  led  them  to  believe  that  they  are  as 
much  superior  to  the  Southern  people  as  are  the  people  of  England  to 
the  people  of  British  India  ;  and  that  they  should  conquer,  subjugate 
and  reduce  the  Southern  people  to  the  condition  of  the  Hindostan. 

The  human  mind  can  conceive  of  no  worse  condition  than  the  Southern 
people  would  be  placed  in  should  they  fail  to  resist  this  political  intol- 
erance and  maintain  their  independence.  Enduring  degradation, 
poverty  and  ruin  would  be  their  fate. 

The  war,  then,  in  which  we  are  engaged,  has  for  its  causes  an  in- 
tolerant spirit  on  the  part  of  the  North,  making  them  fiinatical;  a 
belief  on  their  part  that  we  are  their  inferiors,  and  only  entitled  to 
an  inferior  position  in  the  Government;  and  a  determination  through 
an  extreme  love  of  wealth  and  power,  to  rule  over  us  for  all  time  to 


come,  for  their  own  aggrandizement.  (To  this  we  cannot  submit. 
We  have  Constitutional  Liberty  at  stake,  and  every  dollar's  worth  of 
property  we  possess,  amounting  at  this  time  to  no  less  than  six  thou- 
sand five  huDdred  millions  of  dollars  worth  in  value.)  From  these 
deep  rooted  causes  combined,  the  vast  amount  of  property  at  stake, 
as.  well  as  every  political  right  which  we  of  the  South  hold  dear,  wo 
may  look  for  one  of  the  most  closely  contested  and  desperate  conflicts 
of  modern  times.  The  North  has  the  greatest  population,  but  this  is 
more  than  counterbalanced  by  the  justness  of  the  Southern  cause, 
and  their  great  natural  advantages.-  **  He  whose  cause  is  just  is 
doubly  armed."  Their  soldiers  fight  for  power  and  plunder,  ours  for 
everything  dear  to  man. 

The  chivalrous  spirit  of  the  Cavalier,  Hugenot  and  Irish  stock, 
with  the  perseverance  of  the  Catholic,  and  indomitable  courage  of 
the  Scotch  spirit,  will  never  permit  the  South  to  succumb  to  the  Puri- 
tan or  Quaker  blood  of  the  North. 

Slavery  in  some  shape  or  form  directly  or  indirectly,  has  existed 
in  all  civilized  communities  in  every  age  of  the  world.  "  The  potter 
hath  power  over  the  clay  to  make  one  vessel  to  honor  and  another  to 
dishonor."  So  long  as  there  are  great  diversities  in  the  human  intel- 
lect, so  long  as  there  are  physical  as  well  as  mental  diversities,  and  so 
long,  as  there  are  higher  and  lower  pusuits  in  life,  some  must  be 
richer,  some  must  be  greater  than  others ;  some  must  command  while 
others  are  in  duty  bound  to  obey. 

Diversity  in  the  human  intellect  is  not  confined  to  families  of  the 
same  race,  but  extends  to  the  different  races  of  mankind.  So  long  as 
this  inequality  of  the  human  race  exists  there  will  be  the  slavery  of 
races  as  well  as  of  classes.  There  are  three  prominent  systems  of 
slavery  now  existing  in  the  world.  The  people  of  Hindostan  are  in  a 
state  of  national  slavery  to  those  of  Great  Britain.  That  class  of 
people  in  ever}'-  country,  who  have  no  voice  in  making  the  laws,  are 
in  a  state  of  slavery  to  those  who  do.  This  is  the  slavery  of  one  class 
to  that  of  another  class.  In  the  Confederate  States  there  exists  the 
slavery  of  the  negro  to  the  white  race.  This  is  a  natural  state  of 
slavery,  and  the  same  established  by  the  God  of  Abraham,  of  Isaac  and 
of  Jacob ;  a  system  which  is  beneficial  to  the  slave  and  the  master,  to 
the  higher  and  lower  race ;  one  under  which,  notwithstanding  untold 
millions  have,  during  the  last  half  century,  been  transferred  by'fraud- 
ulent  and  unjust  legislation  from  the  Southern  to  the  Northern  States, 
yet  the  average  of  wealth  to  each  individual  is  now  greater  in  the  lat- 
ter than  in  the  former.  If  we  look  to  the  distribution  of  that  wealth, 
if  we  look  to  the  comfort  and  contentment  of  the  whole  population, 
white  and  black,  if  we  look  to  the  number  of  paupers  and  criminals, 
(population  being  considered,)  as  compared  to  these  things  in  the  so- 
called  free  labor  States,  or  other  free  labor  countries,  we  have  no  cause 
to  regret  the  establishment  of  the  institution  of  slavery  in  our  limits. 
So  far  from  regrets,  a  full  examination  into  this  great  question,  in  all 
its  bearings,  has  an  brought  overwhelming  majority  of  our  people  to 
the  conclusion,  that  while  they  have  no  quarrel  with  or  war  to  make 
upon  the  people  of  the  Northern  States  or  other  countries  on  account 


of  any  labor  system  wliich  the  ruling  power  of  these  people  may  deem 
proper  to  establish  or  retain,  they  will  never  submit  to  any  change  in 
their  own  domestic-policy  to  gratify  the  intolerance  or  supposed  inter- 
est of  any  other  people. 

When  the  higher  laAv  party  of  the  North,  whose  leaders  openly  re- 
pddiated  the  solemn  obligations  of  their  oaths  to  support  the  Consti- 
tution of  the  United  States,  w^ere -borne  into  power  by  the  (falsely  so 
called)  Kepublican  .party  of  the  North,  the  Southern  people  could  see 
no  mode  of  perpetuating  constitutional  liberty  on  the  North  American 
Continent,  but  by  promptly  cutting  loose,  from  States  whose  people 
had  determined  to  uphold  principles  so  detrimental  to  the  peace  and 
prosperity  of  the  whole  country. 

The  people  of  the  Southern  States,  if  let  alone  to  enjoy  their  own 
agricultural  pursuits  in  peace,  Avould  be  content  for  many  years  to 
purchase  their  main  supplies  of,  manufactured  articles  from  the  free 
labor  countries  with  crowded  population,  thereby  being  profitable  cus- 
tomers to  the  manufacturing  States  of  the  North,  and  a  numb3r  of 
European  countries.  At  this  time  the  one  Avars  upon  them,  and  the. 
others  to.  avoid  war  with  the  North,  and  to  see  the  power  of  the  Amer- 
ican people  reduced  by  intestine  strife,  w^aives  their  right  to  set  aside 
a  blockade  clearly  void  on  account  of  its  insufficiency. 

Under  such  circumstances  the  people  of  the  Confederate  States, 
haying  no  navy  to  protect  commerce,  must  mainly  look  within  their 
own  limits  for  every  essential  necessary  to  achieve  complete  indepen- 
dence and  finally  uphold  American  power.  Having  all  the  elements 
of  the. highest  degree  of  prosperity  in  manufactures  i\s  well  as  that  in 
agriculture,  if  the  war  continues  long  and  the  blockade  is  not  broken 
up,  they  must  become  competitors  instead  of  rich  customers  to  the  old 
manufacturing  countries. 

Let  our  people  be  certain  to  plant  an  abundant  supply  of  all  that  is 
necessary  for  food,  and  go  to  making  everything  necessary  to  prose- 
cute the  war,  within  their  own  limits.  Let  them  invest  in  commerce 
and  prepare  the  way  without  delay  to  build  up  a  direct  trade  with  all 
friendly  countries.  We  need  direct  trade  houses  or  companies  through 
Avhich  to  purchase  war  material  and  manufacturing  machinery.  The 
English  and  French  have  their  agents  in  our  country  to  purchase  their 
supplies  of  cotton  and  tobacco,  and  sell  us  their  goods.  .  We  need  our 
own  agents  in  foreign  countries  to  buy  and  sell  for  us. 

The  successful  termination  of  the  war  in  any  reasonable  time  will 
leave  the  Confederate  States  in  possession  of  the  basis  of  an  extensive 
commerce.  It  is  altogether  practical  to  establish  a  system  of  trade 
through  large,  well  regulated  companies,  and  their  agencies,  which 
would  be  as  much  preferable  to  the  present  system  of  trade  as  railroads 
are  superior  over  old  wagon  roads  for  traveling  purposes.  At  this 
time  such  a  company  could  do  much  to  extricate  our  trade  from  block- 
ade difficulties.  Every  planter,  every  farmer  and  every  manufacturer, 
as  well  as  every  consumer  of  goods  is  deeply  interested  in  the  estab- 
lishment of  this  system  without  further  delay.  For  ten  years  it  has 
been  discussed  and  now  nothing  is  lacking  but  to  carry  it  out  practi- 
cally. 


The  Northern  Government  and  Northern  capitalists  have  made  a 
combination  to  procure  our  cotton  at  less  than  half  its  value.  Our 
government  planters,  merchants  and  bankers  should  make  a  combina- 
tion in  self-defence,  and  for  future  protection. 

In  the  old  Southern  States  for  many  years  after  the  Revolutionary 
War,  the  planting  interests  looked  upon  those  engaged  in  the  pursuits 
of  commerce  or  manufactures  as  inferior  in  position.  This  kept  these 
classes  to  a  great  extent  out  of  the  halls  of  legislation  as  representa- 
tives of  the  Southern  people,  and  has  been  one  cause  oi  the  languish- 
ing condition  of  commerce  and  manufactures  within  the  Southern 
States. 

Commerce  and  manuficturea  are  necessary  pursuits  to  civilized 
communities  as  well  as  agriculture,  and  there  is  nothing  more  dis- 
honorable, in  a  proper  course  of  business,  in  either  of  these  pursuits 
than  in  planting.  It  requires  as  high  an  order  of  intellect  and  as 
high  a  degree  of  intelligence  to  purchase  a  stock  of  goods  or  build  a 
steam  engine  as  it  does  to  plant  and  worm  tobacco  in  Virginia  or  cul- 
tivate cotton  and  invent  traps  to  destroy  the  Miller  which  produces 
the  bowl  worm  in  South  Carolina. 

The  good  of  the  country,  at  this  time,  requires  that  these  unfounded 
distinctions  in  regard  to  thesse  pursuits  should  be  at  once  discarded. 
A  number  of  leading  men  are  strong  advocates  for  opening  up  our 
ports  entirely  free  to  the  trade  of  the  world.  We  think  our  govern- 
ment should  scan  this  policy  very  closely  before  adopting  it.  We  will 
have  for  a  number  of  years  a  heavy  tax  to  pay.  To  undertake  the 
whole  collection  directly,  will  appear  very  burdensome  to  our  people, 
who  have  so  long  paid  the  greater  portion  of  their  taxes  indirectly. 
Under  the  old  tariff  laws  the  taxes  were  levied  as  unequally  as  those 
interested  in  protection  could  possibly  have  them  made.  Under  our 
present  Constitution  the-  duties  must  be  laid  for  revenue,  and  by  pro- 
per care  may  be  made  to  bear  as  equally  upon  our  people  as  any  direct 
system  of  taxation  now  in  force  in  any  of  the  States.  Prudence  dic- 
tates, under  the  necessity  of  collecting  large  amounts  for  some  years, 
that  both  the  direct  and  indirect  systems  be  kept  up  for  the  present  on 
the  part  of  the  Confederate  government.  Experience  will  teach  our 
Legislators  whether  to  abandon  one  or  the  other  modes  of  raising  gov- 
ernment money,  or  whether  to  keep  both  up  permanently.  For  many 
years  we  should  preserve  the  impost  system,  if  for  no  other  purpose 
than  to  tax  fraudulent  goods  out  of  our  markets.  Before  the  di^olution 
of  the  Union  a  number  of  our  State  Legislatures  found  it  advantageous 
to  their  honest  people  to  tax  Yankee  pedlars  out  of  their  limits  on  ac- 
count of  their  cheating  propensities.  x\ll  the  shabby  goods  of  New 
England  should  be  taxed  to  prohibition.  Such  frauds  should  always 
be  legislated  out  of  the  country. 

For  several  centuries  past,  the  general  political  tendency  has  been 
from  small  powers  and  principalities  to  great  kingdoms  and  empires. 
The  most  prominent  of  these,  during  the  present  century  is  the  Em- 
pire of  Russia,  that  of  France,,  the  Kingdom  of  Great  Britain  and  the. 
United  States  of  America.  AVith  rapid  strides,  the  American  Union 
bid  fair  to  become  the  first  power  of  the  world,  when  suddenly  in  con- 


sequence  of  the  indorsement  of  the  higher  law  doctrine  of  the  (falsely 
so  called)  Republican  party,  on  the  part  of  a  majority  of  the  legal 
voters  in  the  Northern  States,  the  Union  was  severed  as  the  only 
mode  left  of  preventing  the  whole  country  from  sinking  rapidly  into 
political  and  religious  infidelity  under  the  wicked  rule  of  the  higher 
law  and  irrepressible  conflict  party  of  the  North.  As  this  baneful 
doctrine  was  invented  and  persistently  promulgated  by  the  people  of 
New  England  and  New  York  for  their  own  aggrandizement  at  the  ex- 
pense of  the  other  great  section  of  the  Union,  "  the  sober  second 
thought"  will  separate  the  people  of  the  Western  States,  and  those  of 
the  Pacific  from  the  Eastern  States,  as  it  has  already  done  those  of 
the  Confederate  States. 

A  better  government  and  a  far  more  permanent  Union  can  then 
be  formed  than  that  which  has  been  broken  up  in  consequence  of  New 
England  fanaticism,  and  the  blind  selfishness  of  the  commercial  and 
manufacturing  States  of  the  Northeast,  At  the  separation,  the  Con- 
federate Congress,  exempted  by  law,  all  the  agricultural  productions 
and  all  the  live  stock  of  the  AVestern  people,  from  taxation  within 
their  limits,  and  by  law,  give  them  the  free  navigation  of  the  Missis- 
ippi  river.*  Notwithstanding  this  prompt  generosity,  the  Western 
people  wage  an  unjust  and  bloody  war  against  those  who  otherwise 
would  be  their  friends  and  best  customers. 

The  commercial  and  manufacturing  States  of  the  Northeast,  now 
have  schemes  of  taxation  and  finance  which  will  throw  almost  the  en- 
tire expense  of  the  present  war  upon  the  agricultural  and  mining 
States.  This  injustice  w^ill  become  so  glaring  and  so  enormous,  that 
the  whole  debt  of  the  war  will  be  repudiated  by  the  Western  people, 
and  the  government  paper  of  every  description.  Treasury  notes  in- 
cluded, will  fail  dead  upon  those  who  are  the  holders.  The  shrewd 
bankers  and  merchants  of  Philadelphia,  Boston  and  New  York,  will 
take  good  care  to  have  none  of  it  upon  their  hands.  Their  business 
will  be  to  puff  it  up  as  the  best  paper  in  the  world,  in  order  to  get 
clear  of  it  themselves.  As  soon  as  this  gigantic  paper  swindle,  which 
the  bankers,  merchants  and  manufacturers  of  the  Northeastern  States 
are  putting  upon  the  farmers  of  the  West,  for  the  purpose  of  carrying, 
on  an  unjust  war  against  the  Southern  people,  for  their  own  profit  is 
fully  understood  and  severely  felt,  as  it  soon  will  be,  another  separation 
will  take  place,  wdiich  will  end  in  the  Western  and  Pacific  States  form- 
ing a  U#ion  of  their  own.  The  Western  people,  through  proper  com- 
mercial, treaties  with  Great  Britain  and  the  Confederate  States,  can 
obtain  cheaper  outlets  to  the  markets  of  the  world  through  the  Mis- 
sissippi river  and  the  St.  Lawrence,  than  they  now  have  through  the 
Hud:on.  The  Pacific  and  Western  States  once  separated  from  the 
commercial  and  manufacturing  States,  which,  in  point  of  territory  are 
only  as  large  as  .two  of  the  counties  of  Texas,  will  have  no  difliculty 
in  forming  a  friendly  alliance,  offensive  and  defensive,  with  the  Con- 
federate States. 


*  See  pages  9  and  26,  of  the  Acts  and  Resolutions  of  the  first  Session  of  the 
Provisional  Congress,  held  at  Montgomery,  Alabama,  1861. 


A  great  Union  will  thus  be  reconstructed,  rid  of  that  corrupt  little 
part  which  dissolved  the  original  one.  Each  one  of  these  sections 
will  make  its  own  domestic  policy,  without  interfering  with  that  of 
the  other.  Peace,  prosperity,  constitutional  liberty,  and  power  will 
again  reign  upon  the  best  portion  of  the  North  American  continent. 

Not  only  has  there  been  a  strong  tendency  in  modern  times  for 
small  principalities  and  powers  to  give  w^ay  or  be  absorbed  by  exten- 
sive kingdoms,  empires  and  governments,  but  religious  sectarian  per- 
secutions have  to  a  great  extent  died  out,  and  there  is  a  strong  ten- 
dency to  the  union  of  religious  sects  as  well  as  the  union  of  States. 
The  rapid  increase  of  war  steamers,  the  great  number  and  length  of 
railways,  and  the  long  lines  of  telegraph  wdres,  are  giving  to  the  affairs 
of  the  world  an  accelerated  motion.  More  will  be  accomplished  in 
human  affairs  during  the  next  century  than  has  been  for  the  last  five 
hundred  years. 

It  is  time  the  enlightened  States  and  nations  of  the  earth  should 
cease  political  persecutions,  and  war  no  more  for  the  purpose  of  keep- 
ing each  other  down.  The  prosperity  of  our  thorough  amicable  rela- 
tions, adds  to  the  welfare  of  others.  It  is  time  that  the  various  re- 
ligious sects  and  denominations  should  entirely  cease  their  bickering 
and  unite  to  uphold  constitutional  liberty,  law,  order,  peace  and  vir- 
tue under  the  worship  of  the  only  living  and  true  God. 

What  then,  under  all  the  circumstances  of  home  dissensions  and 
foreign  jealousies,  will  best  promote  for  the  future  the  welfare  and 
power  -(to  do  good)  of  the  American  people  ?  First,  to  put  down  ef- 
fectually the  intolerance  of  New  England  and  the  worship,  of  the 
golden  calf  on  the  part  of  the  commercial  and  manufacturing  States 
of  the  North. 

Secondly — to  maintain  and  perpetuate  State  governments  for  the 
protection  of  local  rights  and  interests. 

Thirdly — a  further  dissolution  of  the  old  Union  into  grand  natural 
sectional  divisions,  and  each  sectional  grand  division  put  under  its 
own  Confederate  or  General  government  for  the  protection  of  sectional 
rights. 

Fourthly — a  union  of  these  grand  divisions  into  one  power,  thi:ough 
friendly  treaties,  for  the  protection  of  the  whole. 

J.  B.  GLADNEY,  Chairman, 

No  relaxation  of  hostilities  should  take  place  on  the  part  of  the 
Southern  people,  nor  any  peace  or  reconstruction  propositions  be  en- 
tertained as  long  as  there  remains  any  Northern  troops  within  the 
Confederate  States,  or  blockading  vessels  upon  the  coast. 


HoUinger  Corp. 
pH8^ 


